I’ve been using the internet, in one form or another, for about twelve or thirteen years, now — ever since I went off to college, and the use of email exploded and commercial service providers sprang up all over the country to get people connected. America Online was always the big black sheep of that bunch, a faceless, monolithic corporation who made it very easy for people to get on the web but whose many, many users quickly gained a reputation for an inability or unwillingness to learn and abide by the internet’s established societal norms. It became very easy to point and laugh at the internet giant, even after it ballooned and was absorbed by Time Warner — AOL was often seen as the lowest common denominator of internet services out there.

While we were out last week, I saw in the news that AOL has decided to stop charging ufor access to its services, allowing anyone with a broadband connection to check their AOL email and use AOL’s software. Smart — but then I laughed out loud when I saw that in order to get rid of the fees, AOL users have to call a customer service number, and CAN’T get rid of the charges online or via email — i.e., by using AOL’s services. This, on the heels of at least one account of AOL’s horrible customer service refusing to easily cancel a user account and what appears to be a brand new instance of their customer service refusing to cancel a dead man’s account.

So yeah, I thought I’d seen it all. Then I saw this, which I apparently missed.

Holy. Crap.

Why the big deal, you ask? Let’s see. From this “anonymized” data dump, which AOL apparently pulled from the web mere hours after letting it loose (too late!), there’s been at least some tentative identification of criminal behavior — and now, at least one of the “anonymous” searchers has been positively identified, all in a little less than three days.

But no. Don’t worry about Google or Yahoo or Microsoft turning over their search logs to the government. I’m sure that there’s nothing in there that might positively identify or embarrass you (or worse) — and even if there is, the federal government will take every precaution to make sure that your personal information isn’t lost or stolen.